Something about the Saw franchise’s obsession with making Hoffman look at things and see things and witness things. From the very beginning he keeps being made to witness things.
examples in chronological timeline order:
1. Angelina’s Death
Hoffman doesn’t just find out that his sister is dead, he responds to the scene. He sits next to her, cradling her hand and weeping, but first he falls to his knees, taking everything in. The scene includes many close up shots of Angelina’s wounds and blank face so that we can see what Hoffman is seeing. He gets front row tickets to the greatest tragedy of his life.
Later, when meeting Jigsaw, he actually brings up the difference between knowing and seeing for yourself
2. Seth Baxter’s Trap
In the beginning of Saw V, Seth Baxter dies in his trap but not before spotting the peephole in the wall. It is later revealed that Hoffman is watching him through that hole. This is Mark’s first saw trap. Before this, I assume he had never witnessed anything close to death via pendulum and after Seth dies he turns away, visibly distressed.
3. Meeting Jigsaw
When Mark first meets John Kramer, John has him tied up in a chair. He pulls a mirror over and places it in front of Mark, essentially forcing him to look at himself. He asks, “What do you see?” repeatedly.
He threatens to pull the shotgun trigger saying again “what do you see? Look. Look!” Hoffman begs John to say outright what he wants because Mark doesn’t understand what he’s supposed to be seeing.
4. As an Apprentice
during the flashbacks that Strahm has of Kramer molding Hoffman into his apprentice, there is a moment as they are setting up Paul’s trap where Kramer is watching through a low crack in the door. Mark approaches and expresses guilt for his actions and that he wants to leave. Kramer encourages him to not let the traps be personal and has him watch through the crack instead
this is yet another moment of Mark being pushed (by John and by the writers) to watch disturbing things, possibly to encourage a desensitization which enables his later increasingly violent actions.
4.5
there’s also a quick scene where Kramer and Hoffman are setting up the house in Saw 2 where Kramer has Hoffman put his eye up to the barrel of a gun, perhaps the most outright visualization of this pattern that we see.
5. Sewing Up His Face
in the scene where Hoffman is stitching his face back together after being put in the RBT v2, there are a whopping THREE different angle shots that all show Mark watching himself sew his face together. Two shots are of him directly and one is through the mirror, again allowing us to see directly what he is seeing.
After this, there is another shot of him assessing his handiwork
6. Confronting Jill
now this scene is especially interesting because it could have been a play on the established pattern. In this scene Hoffman grabs Jill’s hair and says “How do I look?” It would be fairly typical direction for him to force her to look at him then, particularly his sewn up face, since she is responsible for it. It would’ve made a nice reversal of the established pattern of Hoffman being made to look at what has been done to others because he is now forcing someone to look at what has been done to him. However, as the gif below shows, that is not the direction that they went with. Instead, Hoffman lets Jill close her eyes and actually moves out of her line of sight. Even if she wanted to, she could only see about half of his face and he’s turning the scarred half away from her. It completely subverts expectations.
Gif source
Sure, on the surface it looks like a simple intimidation move, violating Jill’s personal space and gloating over her “powerlessness”, but what else does this say about Mark? What does it say about him that he finally has the chance to reverse the roll he has entered and make someone else be the witness but he essentially hides from her gaze?
UPDATE BECAUSE I SOMEHOW FORGOT ABOUT THESE SCENES DESPITE THEM BEING THE REASON I MADE THIS POST IN THE FIRST PLACE
7 & 8. Hoffman’s drugging
There are two different scenes where Hoffman is drugged by jigsaw/a jigsaw apprentice. The first is when he is kidnapped by John Kramer for their confrontation. While riding in an elevator together John stabs Hoffman with one of the signature Jigsaw syringes but unlike other kidnapping scenes, the drugs don’t knock Hoffman out immediately. He is clearly awake and aware for a good few moments after the stab
he has the awareness to fight back but not the physical capability. After he realizes this you can see the fear enter his expression
That’s because this is a horrifying concept. Unlike any of the other Saw characters who are drugged, Hoffman is forced to grapple with the fact that he is now at the total mercy of a stranger, he is watching himself become vulnerable. He has time to process the knowledge that this man can and probably will do horrible things to him and he will be helpless to stop it. He doesn’t know that it’s Kramer so he can’t expect the man to follow Kramer’s rules. For Hoffman, anything and everything is on the table as a possible outcome. This is one of the only scenes in the franchise where the background score takes on a more traditional horror movie sound instead of the standard industrial metal. That’s because Hoffman’s kidnapping is an absolute nightmare.
It’s possible that this drugging went so different than the others because Kramer was still new to being jigsaw and therefore hadn’t perfected the knock out drug, but that theory is proved unlikely by Hoffman’s second drugging which is carried out by Lawrence Gordon after Hoffman is beat on by two bonus apprentices.
it’s particularly interesting that Lawrence is responsible for this drugging since his own drugging was pretty quick and easy. He’s in the car park, he’s jumped, he’s out. Meanwhile Hoffman is stabbed and still completely coherent, at least enough to see Lawrence and say “what the fuck?”
He even has the strength to grab onto Lawrence’s pant leg. Only after he is pushed off does he succumb to the drugging
While these scenes do have similarities—Hoffman has no idea whether Lawrence will play by jigsaw’s rules and so the fear of being vulnerable to any sort of horror should be present—they are treated very differently. Hoffman is not the same man he was when John first drugged him. He has seen so much and witnessed so much. Not just the things on this list but also the things that he has made himself witness. Hoffman watched both Strahm and Jill die by his hand. He watched Strahm get crushed to death with a front row seat and a grin (but looked almost sad afterwards). He watched Jill get ripped apart with satisfaction (but turned away when the blood actually went flying). The horror music doesn’t play during Hoffman’s second drugging because this is no longer like a scene from a horror movie to Hoffman, this has just become his reality.
